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Marie Manalo

Officer

Marie is a mother to a wonderful boy, AJ (3). AJ deals with delays in speech and comprehension. At 3 years old, AJ struggles with communicating his feelings and needs and gets frustrated because he lacks the words to communicate clearly. Matt and Marie hid their fears and told each other that some kids speak sooner than others. It was only until AJ's school administrator approached Marie about getting her son checked for ASD. Wake up call! AJ's parents dealt with the feelings of guilt, fear, and blame for quite some time and then decided to take this pain and turn it into power. Costs of therapies are incredibly high and not covered by insurance. Most children (like Marie's son) end up lost in the state’s hands. Months of unanswered calls, emails, and frustrations with the state processes left her son even more behind then when they started the process. It was after her son’s diagnosis finally came in that Marie decided she needed to tell a different story.

 

Marie joined forces with two other extremely intelligent and passionate mothers dealing with their own children’s learning struggles. Together they decided it was best that we do something to help ALL children and their families as no child should be left behind and no parent should feel helpless and lost. We are still in the very beginning stages of this journey and it is a beautiful thing to be a part of a

community that supports parents and children struggling with the same types of issues. Marie is especially close to the MoMa Movement Method- classes created to help children find their own ways to create happiness through movement, music, exercise, dance, art and meditation. Marie's goal is to help build mentally strong, positive, compassionate, confident children and to be a source and reminder that there is nothing that they cannot be, do, or have!

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